Star Trek: Dawn of the Century (Such Great Patience)
by ThrashMetallix
Summary: When the USS Enterprise-F is flung back in time to the early 21st Century by a fugitive Alien, the crew of the Enterprise much retrieve him from the depths of the Pacific Ocean in the Kuril Trench where he has apparently beamed to, and find a way to get back home. This task will not be easy, especially when they detect the old UEO submarine, the Seaguest DSV 4600.


**This is just a fun little side project I've come up with. A little fun story of the crew I've made for the NCC-1701-F Odyssey Class USS Enterprise, if it were flung back in time to the year 2019. If you're a fan of Star Trek or Seaquest DSV as I am, you might find some fun elements in this little read. Nothing too serious, just a fun idea I had. This takes place during the Seaquest episode "Such Great Patience". Hope you enjoy.**

* * *

 _"Captain's log, Stargate 88360.8. While en route to the Tarkeon System, where we will make contact with a race known as the Selsalorn, who were first contacted by the USS Houston two months ago, we received a transmission from their government to watch for a single craft of their design, carrying a fugitive. We've been asked to return him to Pavunon, back into their custody. It did not take us long to find the ship in question. We took the small craft in by tractor beam, and have taken the fugitive into custody."_

Arlen sighed and walked into the hangar, where the alien humanoid stood. Arlen took one look at the humanoid life form, and put his hands behind his back. "I'm Captain Arlen Gammon. Welcome aboard the Enterprise. I'm afraid your government has requested you to be brought back to Pavunon. You will be handed over to the authorities upon our arrival."

The Selsalorn looked at him, it's pupil-less black eyes studying the officer. The alien wore nothing, but showed no sign of external genitalia. Perhaps nudity was not an issue on their world. The skin of the alien was a tan color, and the internal skeletal system on it's torso was aligned in ways that Arlen couldn't very much picture as his own. The bottom of the rib cage seemed much steeper than that of an ordinary human, and the four fingered hands it had were longer than that of a human. The forehead was also longer and angled back to perhaps show a different size of the brain in this species. After a moment, the creature opened it's mouth and spoke. "It is an honor to be aboard the fabled Enterprise, Captain. My name is hard for your kind to pronounce, but you may call me Eaki."

"Well Eaki, you are our guest, but I'm afraid I must oblige by your government's request. You will be confined to your temporary quarters for the duration of the voyage."

The Selsalorn life form smiled at Arlen. "Of course, Captain..."

Well he was certainly taking this well. Arlen sighed before looking over to his Graham Vasser. "Was he armed?"

"Yes sir, but only with this." his Chief of Security spoke, holding up a strange looking weapon which looked like it was worn around the wrist of the wielder. "He didn't make any resistance As we removed it. He's been very cooperative."

"I'm glad to hear." Arlen said before turning his attention back to the Selsalorn. "You will find your quarters pleasing. If you're hungry, we've had our replicator programmed with some common dishes of your people's diet."

"That won't be necessary, Captain, but I thank you for the offer."

"Very well. Your belongings will be returned to you when we reach Pavunon. If you need anything, don't be afraid to ask." He then nodded to Graham, who nodded in return. "Aye, sir. Garth, Ferguson, please escort Mr. Eaki to his quarters."

Two security officers beckoned to the Selsalorn life form, and escorted him out of the hangar.

Arlen sighed and glanced at the strange craft before looking at his Chief of Security. As they too exited the hangar, and let the members of the shuttle bay tend to the craft for the journey to Pavunon "Well, that was rather painless."

"No complaints here, Captain." Graham said, straightening out his uniform with a quick tuck at the bottom. "I'm glad the encounter was a little brief. I didn't much care for the smell."

"I'm sure we'll get used to it." Arlen replied. "He won't stay on that long, he'll be handed over to his government, and then he'll be their problem. And that'll be the end of it."

"True enough, sir." Graham said. "I just hope the rest of his kind don't give such strange looks as he does. All he did after he got off his shuttle was smile at everyone. And not really in a friendly how-do-you-do way, it was more unsettling than anything."

The ship's intercom beeped once, before Torga's deep voice called "Bridge to Captain Gammon."

Arlen tapped his comm badge and said "Gammon here, what is it Mr. Torga?"

"Sir, Pavunon is within sensor range. Should be in visible range shortly."

"I'm on my way. Gammon out." Arlen said before dismissing Graham and heading to the nearest Turbolift.

Upon reaching the Bridge, he spoke, "Take us out of Warp, Mr. Tronstad." The ship came out of warp immediately, and the Enterprise was facing a small light blue planet, a lot of it covered by what appeared to be snow and ice. Arlen smiled a bit and spoke again, "Standard orbit."

The young officer nodded, and replied "Standard orbit, Captain."

"What do you think of it, Mr. Torga?"

Torga, his Klingon executive officer breathed in deep and said, "With permission, I'd not like to beam to the surface of this particular planet, sir."

Arlen frowned in confusion, and said, "Any reason?" Surely Torga could not have smelled their guest up here?

Torga breathed in and crossed his arms. "Sensor readings indicate a much colder climate than would be comfortable for me. The highest temperature reading for an average day is no more than eleven degrees Celsius, with nightly precipitation ranging from cold rain, to heavy snow. It is an element that I never cared for, sir."

"Mr. Torga, it is a common want for most life to be pleasantly warm, myself included, but you represent a very big ally to the Federation. I must respectfully decline your request, and respectfully say to you, dress warmly when we go down there."

Torga closed his eyes, and said, "Of course, sir. Apologies."

"None needed, commander. What is the status of-"

An alarm suddenly sounded at the console station where S'Taibok was. He frowned and said, "Sir, I'm picking up a large reading of what appears to be Chroniton radiation-"

S'Taibok couldn't finish as there was a blinding flash and suddenly the planet on screen was no longer the light blue, snow planet Pavunon, but much resembled that of Earth.

Arlen frowned. It was Earth. But that didn't seem possible. They'd been in the Delta Quadrant just now. Even at a Quantum Slipstream jump they could not have gotten here so fast!

Arlen looked around at his bridge, and at everyone who looked equally confused. Arlen finally asked the question that he knew he wouldn't get an answer to. "What happened?"

S'Taibok's eyes were glued to his station. "Sir, none of this makes sense. All sensors indicate the planet down there is...Earth."

Arlen sighed. "Can you raise Starfleet? We may as well update them on our-"

"Sir..." S'Taibok said looking up. "I'm not picking up Starfleet...nor any Federation ship within any range."

Arlen looked over to his Chief of Operations, before tapping a nearby button. "Ms. Erickson to the bridge please." He was hoping his Chief Science Officer might be able to give a small explanation as to what was going on. But he also looked over to S'Taibok "Mr. S'Taibok...I hope you have an explanation for me."

S'Taibok shook his head. "No sir, I...wait..."

Torga looked over at S'Taibok when that tone entered his voice. Arlen spoke up. "What is it?"

S'Taibok looked up. "Sir...according to the ship's log...we're not where we think we are...more when we think we are."

"This is no time for riddles." Torga said annoyed. "What do you mean?"

S'Taibok simply took a breath in and replied, "I've run sensor sweeps on the planet just now. Sor, the air pollution is much higher than the Earth we know. I'm reading byproducts of technology and machinery which run on fossil fuels. I'm not familiar with the stages of Earth history as far as eras...but if I had to make a guess...we're orbiting Earth...the Earth of the early 21st Century."

Arlen turned to look at the screen, showing the world that he was so familiar with. A world with absolutely no knowledge of extraterrestrial life. No knowledge of Warp travel. No knowledge of the brighter future... They were alone here...

"How...how did this happen?" Arlen managed to say as he stared at the slow-turning planet below the ship. Arlen walked toward his second officer and stood next to S'Taibok as he continued to give him readings of the planet below. "Sensors are picking up unmanned space craft in orbit of the planet. Likely old Earth satellites."

Arlen crossed his arms looking down at the console, and said. "Are they capable of detecting us?"

"Most definitely sir, however I've already managed to send out a signal to distort their instruments to our presence."

"Good. Keep monitoring anything that might expose us." Arlen said before walking back toward. His chair, wishing that the technology for cloaking Federation ships had been developed already. Oh well... "We'll keep out of orbit and sight until we figure out what happened, and exactly how we can get back home."

Another alarm sounded and suddenly Graham looked up for his console. "Sir, someone's activated the transporter!"

Arlen looked over to Graham. "What?! Shut it down immediately! No one is to leave this ship!"

Graham pushed a few buttons, but looked up from his console. He shook his head. "Too late sir...whoever it was, they're no longer on board."

Arlen sighed and walked over to his chair, arms crossed. "Computer, give me a list of missing crewmen."

There was a small beeping chime as Arlen's request was taken into account. A coupe seconds later, the female computer voice immediately said, "All crewmen of your current manifest are present and accounted for."

Graham spoke up, "That won't be much help if the communicators were taken off."

Torga spoke up, "But that doesn't make sense. The Enterprise is a great ship, but we have no easy means of time travel. If one of our crewmen wished to go into this time period, they'd need to take time...I believe someone would have noticed."

Arlen heard that and immediately tapped his comm badge. "Bridge to Ensign Ferguson, please respond."

There was a moment of silence before Arlen looked to Torga and Graham and beckoned to the Turbolift. "Mr. S'Taibok, you have the bridge. Doctor Kingston, meet us on deck seven, possible Medical Emergency!"

* * *

 _"Captain's Log, supplemental. The current Stardate is unknown. The Enterprise has just entered what I can only assume to be time warp. The Starfleet that I've come to know, and serve has n to even been thought of. Warp travel is at best, a creative idea. And the planet Pavunon, is no longer the planet we look upon. We've somehow returned from the Delta Quadrant and are orbiting Earth as it was in the early 21st Century. To make matters a. Bit more complicated...we've discovered that our Selsalorn fugitive has managed to beam somewhere down to the planet. Somehow, he managed to stun both security guards, along with anyone he came across before beaming himself to the planet. Thankfully the transporter log has not been wiped, so hopefully we should be able to find him. If he's behind our trip in time, I must figure out why he's here. And how we get back."_

Arlen sat in the ready room with his senior staff, and listened to the facts as he heard them. His Chief Medical Officer, Garrett Kingston was speaking. "Well our guest certainly knew how to use a phaser. Both security guards, Ensign Markus, and Ensign Muncey, before getting to Thomas in the transporter room. They'll all be okay, fortunately our visitor only had the phaser set on the lowest setting."

"My question is how he got it." Graham spoke. "We disarmed him. He was personally escorted by two guards to his quarters, and I received confirmation that they saw him in."

Arlen sat back and spoke up, "Well, he may have been disarmed, but this is a new race. We only found out about them ourselves two weeks ago, and even then our report was brief. Are we aware of any telepathic abilities, or any sort of disturbance that may be normal to them?"

Elizabeth Erickson, his chief Science Officer shook her head. "Starfleet's report on the Selsalorn covered that, no known telepathic capabilities."

Garrett leaned forward and folded his hands on the table, and replied, "Plus, I didn't pick up any sort of trauma or mental fluctuations that might be symptoms of a mental attack. The security guards were stunned like the others, but they were disabled in a way I've personally not seen before. I don't know how he did this, but he managed to temporarily cut the function of the central nervous system. He didn't damage any of the nerves, but he by all means, temporarily paralyzed them from the waist down. He caught them by surprise most likely."

Arlen nodded, and replied "From there he took Ferguson's phaser, and made his way to the transporter."

"But wait," Elizabeth said. "If they were paralyzed from the waist down, wouldn't one have had the chance to stun him with their own phaser?"

Graham spoke up. "He did. Well, tried to anyway. To put it simple, he missed."

"Do we know where he beamed to?" Arlen asked.

Lana stood up and directed everyone's attention to the screen. "I've managed to retrieve the transporter logs. He either didn't have time to wipe them, or didn't know how." She said as she brought up the logs. "But regardless, he beamed himself to the following coordinates. Forty-four point sixty-nine, and one hundred fifty-nine point seventy-three."

A map on the screen of Earth below them came on screen, and a red dot appeared in the precise location that she spoke. Upon seeing the location, there was no response. In fact there was a lot of confusion. The red dot wasn't on any landmass. The nearest piece of land seemed to be the area known as Japan, but it was still very far off. And Graham was the first to address it.

"Is there some sort of tampering with the log?" He asked with some confusion. "He couldn't have just beamed himself into the middle of the ocean."

"There is no tampering. He beamed himself to these precise coordinates. However, you'll find this interesting."

"What is it, Ms. Lana?" Arlen asked.

"He didn't arrange to be beamed to the surface of the water. He beamed himself underneath it."

There was some silence, before Garrett spoke up. "Are we to believe that this one alien, took us back in time, just so he could drown himself?"

"That would seem illogical, Doctor." Lana said.

Arlen spoke up. Do we have any knowledge of what's in the water below there? Is there anything at all that would provide a way for him to survive?"

"Nothing to our knowledge, captain." S'Taibok said, standing up to stand near the screen where Lana stood. "I've taken the liberty to begin sensor sweeps of the area around it however. And we came across this." He pressed a button near the screen and a sound began to play. To human ears, it would seem like a garbled noise. It resembled a clean static, yet there was a rhythm to it. A consistent pattern that caught the attention of everyone. S'Taibok continued to speak. "From what we can tell, the signal is strangely...Selsalorn."

Arlen frowned. "That's not possible, mankind hasn't invented the Warp Drive yet. Any knowledge of extra-terrestrial life should be a mystery. And the first known contact with other life did not happen until Vulcans came in 2063, when they detected a Warp signature. Other life would not have known of Earth before then."

"And judging from the lack of any scarring of the Third World War, and lack of advanced spacecraft," Torga spoke, "We must assume that we've been brought here sometime in the first half of the twenty-first century."

"Captain, while it is true that no knowledge of other life was known to humans before your Fist Contact, to say that Earth was not known to other life may not be true." Lana said. "It is possible, that before any sort of history, that other life forms had come to Earth before the rise of man."

Torga growled and said, "We're running on too little information. Captain," he said looking to Arlen. "If there is indeed something down there, we should do a full sensor sweep. We have a signal. There must be some way we can see if there is anything else down there."

"Well, we may not need to wait long, commander." S'Taibok spoke up. "We've detected an unusual amount of large seismic activity in the area. If there's something down there...it may be unearthed in a matter of time."

Arlen stood up. "Well let's all unearth some more clues. If there is something down there that could support life, our guest knew about it. And it's our job to go get him before he does anything to hurt the timeline."

The senior officers exited the ready room as Arlen went for his chair and sat down. "Ensign Tronstad, I want the beaming coordinates on screen. Continue to give me sensor readings on the area."

"Aye, sir." The young ensign spoke as the screen lit up with an image of the Pacific Ocean, northeast of Japan.

Torga stood at a console at the wall, and spoke, "The area is known as the Kuril Trench. It has a depth of roughly five Earth-miles. Picking up multiple signs of seismic activity."

"Natural?" Arlen said. He really hoped it was. If his guest had beamed down with some sort of weapon to cause a natural disaster of some sort, they might be too late. However Torga reassured him when he spoke, "Aye, sir. Though the activity is a little unusual, it is naturally occurring."

S'Taibok spoke up and said, "The activity is powerful captain, but shouldn't be powerful enough to cause a cause for alarm in what you would call, a tsunami. Nothing major anyway."

Torga frowned a moment at his console, before turning back to Arlen. "Captain...I am picking up human signatures in the vicinity."

Arlen wasn't too surprised at the detection of humans, but he sighed. This would certainly make their task much more difficult. "Understood Torga. Shipping vessels?"

Torga shook his head. "Negative captain. The nearest ship I can pick up on the surface is roughly three miles away from the surface coordinates, and is moving away. This signature is below the surface, and right on top of the Selsalorn's beaming coordinates. A submersible vehicle."

"Military?" Arlen asked.

"Unknown captain. But I would speculate that it likely is. I read at least 200 people on the submersible vehicle, but Captain...it's size rivals that of a Constitution Class Starship."

Arlen frowned. "A submarine larger than a Constitution Class Starship? I don't remember submarines being any larger than 175 meters..."

Elizabeth was right next to Torga at the console, "Captain...I'm looking through the records, there were a few submarines of such size built. If we can identify the vessel, we may be able to get a better picture of where...or when we exactly are."

Arlen nodded. "Can we identify the vessel?"

"Give me a moment, sir." Vincent spoke. "Never identified a submarine before..." It took Vincent a brief moment, but after a minute, he said "Captain, I have it. I identify the vessel as the Seaquest DSV 4600."

"The Seaquest?" Elizabeth asked in a gasp. "The actual Seaquest?"

Graham frowned a bit. It was a known fact that Elizabeth loved to immerse herself in old history, and had a love of old ships that rivaled that of Lana, who more just studied old ships, but this was a vessel that one could wonder if Lana herself knew about. "What's the Seaquest? I've never heard of that."

"I wouldn't expect you to, Lieutenant..." Elizabeth said looking at the screen which showed the ocean below them. "But it's one of man's biggest accomplishments in ocean exploration..."

Arlen just stared at the screen trying to contemplate his science officer's words. He wasn't sure about his history here, but at least they had a lead as to when exactly they were. But the question was still in the air as to why the Selsalorn had chosen this particular time to come to, or why they had come to Earth was still a mystery. He turned to see Elizabeth. "Lieutenant, I want all information you have on this vessel and any possible events that might be connected to it in this area that you can dig up, and I want it ready in thirty minutes."

Elizabeth nodded. "Aye, sir."

Arlen stood up up and began to leave the bridge. "All senior staff are to report to the ready room by then, and we'll decide our course of action then. Mr. Torga, you have the bridge."


End file.
